CEBU Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia yesterday apologized to Cebuanos for the purchase of the Balili property in Tinaan, Naga and pledged to recover the amount paid for the portion that is underwater. Garcia said she will take full responsibility for the purchase.

According to the Capitol survey, 94,526 square meters of the property are submerged, 80,124 square meters underwater and 14,402 square meters with mangroves.

Garcia said Capitol will recover P37.8 million of the P98 million paid for the property from the Balili estate through its executor, Romeo Balili. She said they will write the demand letter today.

Lawyer Gloria Ramos, one of those who questioned the Province's purchase, said a prudent lawyer would always trace back documents to the original title in order to ensure its validity.

Had officials done their research, "they would have known that there was a court order issued declaring it null and void," she said in a separate interview.

Ramos said public interest "demands that the investigation continue and those who benefited from this anomalous transaction and those who failed to exercise due diligence in the performance of their duty be held accountable."

2 checks

On the claim by Amparo, the widow of Luis Balili, that she only got P65 million of the P98 million paid by Capitol, Garcia said the media and the public should ask Romeo Balili where the rest of the money went because two checks totaling P98 million were issued to him as court-appointed administrator of the Balili estate.

CEBU City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Vice Mayor Michael Rama reached a compromise on the P13.5-million payment for the Ting property, which is to pay only for the dry portion or half of the 4,222-square-meter lot.

Hurt and demoralized, a number of doctors detailed at the Pediatrics Ward of the Cebu City Medical Center are threatening to go on mass leave or to resign altogether in face of negative reports concerning their handling of dengue patients that resulted in a number of deaths.

Quezon Representative Danilo Suarez on Thursday admitted that he was the one who paid for the dinner that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her entourage enjoyed in a Washington restaurant last month. "I invited the President, the First Gentleman and the whole group to have dinner at Morton's, but Morton's was not available so we shifted to Bobby Van's," Suarez said.

The dinner was reported by the Washington Post blog, which said Mrs. Arroyo and her party spent $15,000 for the meal.

Suarez confirmed the amount, saying $11,000 was spent on food, beverages, and wines, while the rest was spent on tax charges and tips.

"Wala namang relevance 'yung paghihirap ng taumbayan (The dinners were irrelevant to our country's poverty)," Suarez said, adding that the focus should be on the benefits that country gained during the US visit.

In the thick of the controversy on President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo"s supposed lavish dinners in her recent United States trip, an official from the Office of the Ombudsman on Thursday said there are no standards on what constitutes a lavish lifestyle for a public official.

Still smarting from criticisms of alleged lavished dinners during her trip to the US, President Macapagal-Arroyo on Thursday shared a "simple" snack with officials and other guests in the town of Alimodian during an official visit.

Malacañang said Thursday that critics had no business complaining about President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's supposedly lavish dinners abroad when she was bringing in "billions" worth of investments in return.

Senators are urging Malacanang to "come clean" on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's reported lavish dinner in the United States, which a lawmaker at the House of Representatives insisted was for free, along with their plane fare and hotel accommodation.

But Manila Representative Bienvenido Abante, one of the lawmakers who was part of the President's entourage, claimed that all expenses for the trip were paid but added that he didn't know who picked up the bill.

Fresh from a controversial overseas trip, the Arroyo administration is shopping around for a used "Presidential fixed-wing executive jet" worth at least P1.2 billion.

The aircraft must be "factory new, twin-engine (turbo-fan engines), pressurized, fitted with auxiliary power unit, and with VIP cabin configuration," said an advertisement placed by the Office of the President in the Philippine Star on Thursday.

"The type of aircraft to be offered should have been used as a VIP/Executive aircraft by the country of origin and by at least two countries," the ad continued.

The ad was signed by a certain attorney Lynn Danao-Moreno, an assistant executive secretary and chairperson of the bids and awards committee of the Office of the President.

Under the Arroyo administration, the government acquired at least two brand-new choppers, one of which crashed in Ifugao province last April, killing Palace personnel, including Press Undersecretary Jose Capadocia.

Palace lawyers had claimed that the First Couple was no longer listed in the records of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as having business interest in two of the 15 companies cited in the PCIJ"s three-part report. Documents obtained by PCIJ, however, say otherwise.

It was a fitting capstone for the person it hailed as its Woman of the Year in 1986 and listed as one of its Asian heroes when it celebrated its sixth decade in 2006. Renowned international publication Time Magazine has once again paid tribute to and celebrated the life of former President Corazon Aquino, who it named as "the woman who changed Asia."

Time Magazine's August 17, 2009 Asian edition devoted three special reports chronicling Mrs. Aquino's ascent to power, how she ran the Philippine government as "a miracle worker," and how people-backed, nonviolent protests across the world drew inspiration from the historic 1986 EDSA Revolution.

In 1986, she was named Woman of the Year, the first female to receive Time's annual distinction after Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.

She was also recognized in 2006 as among the 60 Asian Heroes, along with Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Mohandas Gandhi, and fellow democracy icon, Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi.

Three other Filipinos made it to the list. They are: billiards champion Efren "Bata" Reyes and Philippine Daily Inquirer founders Eugenia Apostol and Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc.

Time also featured Mrs. Aquino for three times in February and March 1986, in the wake of the historic People Power revolution that catapulted her to the world's spotlight.

Hundreds of soldiers crept into a major lair of the Abu Sayyaf in a village in Basilan Wednesday night, to carry out what military officials described as a thorough and "intelligence-driven" combat operation against suspected terrorists.

When the daylong "hand-to-hand" gun-battle ended and the smoke cleared, 23 soldiers—two of them young officers belonging to the Army's elite group— were killed and 22 others were wounded in the biggest clash with the Abu Sayyaf so far.

A saddened military on Thursday could not remember suffering such heavy casualties following the carnage on July 20, 2007 when 14 Marines were killed—10 of them beheaded—during a fruitless rescue operation for kidnapped Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi.

Army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Arnulfo Burgos Jr. identified the two junior Army officers as First Lieutenant Chester Barela of the Philippine Military Academy Class 2004 and First Lieutenant Dhel Jhun Evangelista (PMA Class 2006).

Corporal Renato Dindin, an Army enlisted personnel, also died in the combat operation.

The first clash began at around 3:30 a.m. with initially 50 Abu Sayyaf fighters.

A bigger clash occurred two hours later or at around 5:30 a.m. and lasted for seven hours with at least 300 troops engaging roughly 150 Abu Sayyaf members.

The camp which the military overran on Wednesday was believed to have been headed by Abu Sayyaf commander Furuji Indama. Amateur members of the al-Qaida linked group were being trained in bomb-making in the said camp.

Government troops conducting clearing operations in the area Thursday have recovered 21 bodies out of the roughly 30-40 Abu Sayyaf members killed in the biggest encounter since July 2007, said Burgos.

The United States will help set up radar stations in the restive southern Philippines as it expressed its continuing commitment to support the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in its fight against terror.

The poll body asked former House Speaker Jose De Venecia Jr. to present evidence on his petition seeking to nullify the accreditation of the merger of Lakas-CMD and Kampi into one national political party for the 2010 elections.

Deputy presidential spokesman Anthony Golez Jr. and actor Cesar Montano on Wednesday took their oaths as members of the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC) in Quezon City. Golez would be running for congressman of Bacolod, while Montano - a defeated administration senatorial candidate in 2007 - is eyeing the governorship of Bohol.

The Supreme Court has suspended indefinitely from practicing law a former colleague after he was found guilty gross misconduct and of violating the code of professional responsibility. The high tribunal issued the ruling against retired associate justice Ruben Reyes over the premature release of a decision involving the case of Congresswoman Jocelyn Limkaichong.

The remains of the eight Filipino overseas workers who were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan will be brought home soon, according to the Vice President and Presidential Adviser on OFW Noli de Castro.

Dr. Purificacion Valera-Quisumbing, presidential envoy for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, was unanimously elected as Vice President of the Advisory Committee for the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last August 6, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.